Within Internet message handling services, electronic mail messages are transferred from one computer to another using a client-server application architecture. When an e-mail server has to deal with bursts of e-mail traffic, it typically utilizes first in first out (FIFO) queuing to process messages in the order they are received. This may cause problems for the e-mail server. For example, a more active sender may cause messages from all other senders to be queued if FIFO were the only mechanism that determines the order and priority of message processing in the e-mail server.